By IRNA,
Islamabad : Ayesha Siddiqa, a Pakistani independent security analyst, said on Friday that attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in the city of Lahore was not carried out in a typical militant style.
Talking to IRNA, Siddiqa added that the attack was done in a commando style and the attackers disappeared as they knew the city of Lahore very well.
About a dozen gunmen attacked Sri Lanka’s cricket team in Lahore on Tuesday with rifles, grenades and rockets, wounding six players, a British coach and a Pakistani umpire, and killing eight security personals.
The attackers then escaped after a firefight with police that lasted 25 minutes.
Some arrests have been made in connection with the attack.
The Lankan team, after the attacks, left Pakistan for home.
Special arrangements were made for bringing the tourists to the airport and a special helicopter of the Pakistan Air force took them from the Gaddafi Stadium to the Lahore airport.
Following which, they were sent through a chartered flight to Sri Lanka via Abu Dhabi.
Siddiqa, termed the incident as very unfortunate and said its purpose was to damage the image of Pakistan.
She was of the view that one possibility is that Liberation of Tamil Tigers Eelam (LTTE) could be behind this incident.
LTTE is a militant organization based in northern Sri Lanka.
Founded in 1976, it has since actively waged a violent campaign that seeks to create an independent Tamil state in the north and east of Sri Lanka.
“There could be Indian intelligence agency Raw behind this attack, as India wants Pakistan to pay the cost of Mumbai attacks and the Sri Lankan team was targeted because the higher the embarrassment the higher would be the cost”, said Siddiqa.
She added that the third possibility is the presence of any local network.
She viewed that the most important thing is that whoever done it depended on the local network.
“I don’t see any similarity in this incident and Mumbai attacks as when the attackers could not achieve their target of killing the Sri Lankan team they fled away as if they were not on a suicide mission”, said Siddiqa.
To a question she said that ‘of course there was a security lapse’.
She was of the view that Sri Lankan team should have been given proper security.
“May be the security lapse occurred as the PPP government was too busy in dealing with the political rivals in Punjab”, she added.
Siddiqa opined that there was lack at policy making level in dealing with the militants.
“There should be consensus in the security forces to wipe out the militancy from the country”, she added
Siddiqa received her doctorate from King’s College London in 1996 and has worked on issues varying from military technology, defense decision-making, nuclear deterrence, arms procurement, arms production to civil-military relations in South Asia.